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The Development Of Stealth And Counterstealth

Stealth is not new. The modern era of stealth, which began in the mid-1970s with Darpa’s Have Blue project, is half as old as radar itself, and precursor projects date to the 1950s and earlier. That modern era saw stealth go from a controversial, risky new technology to the center of a plan to rebuild U.S. combat air forces with more than 2,000 new bombers, fighters and heavy attack aircraft by the early 2000s. But today there are barely 200 operational manned stealth aircraft in ...

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Stealth, by virtue of it's multiple design compromises, band sensitivity and huge MMH:FH as well as platform pricing (a JASSM doesn't and indeed -cannot- offer the same degree of widespectrum LO as a B-2), is not something which rewards any state outside the Big Three to invest in at more than a tentative level (basic fire control defeat as treatment of hotspots in X/Ka) because the Third and now Fourth Generation of stelth technology leveling require such a massively integrated R&D system (indoor ratscat ranges, high capacity nano particulate handling, active RF mapping to manage loaded signal pathways etc.) that it's simply not as big a pay off as say cruise missile technology from APUs and target drones (even homebuilts an RC) or short range ballistics would be.

Having said this, there is no way any aircraft flying a defensive CAP is going to survive marauding stealth assets riding it's coattrails back home on the combat turn. Because they will be operating in a null of degraded air space control, created by Jx, anything up to WEEKS before the active air campaign launch.

Which means that defensive RFLO, coupled with an extremely aggressive baselane clearance system and/or the ability to enter a contested area from bases beyond immediately counter-CAPing OCA reach is the only certain way of getting up and out from airfield X to a patrol area and holding there, long enough, subtlely enough, to be competent as a threat to not just the inbound raid. But he support jam, tanking and ISR assets which make it work.

Put bluntly: If you need VLO to remain effective, you're fighting the first team. But what defines that threshold need is the constellation of support missions and weapons which push the INT portion of the air campaign deep enough over your territory to be a threat to your DCA base of operations.

A PAK-FA for instance is going to be essential for defeating any of the Euro-Canards with the BVRAAM, even though they themselves are not VLO. Conversely, having VLO doesn't require (issued internal carriage compatible weapons) offensive employment because just being kinda-sorta invisible is going to help shut down a lot of token support from cross-border radars or AEW&C, trying to steer desultory interdictors (Balkans, Georgia, Somalia/Ethiopia etc.) in to do harm simply because nobody is looking for it to happen 0D30.

If you ARE there, and you ARE expecting the raid, not having to chase someone in a Su-24, Su-25 or similar, high-performance terrain hugger is going to make DCA a lot easier as the threat GCI doesn't give steering cues to go around the threat.

Stealth technology consciously "was thrown" from the USSR. It is expensive and not effective protection. In the USSR worked on "resonant" protection - method of suppression of the irradiating frequencies in an antiphase. Probably T-50 got these technologies - it has 6 radar on perimeter. And Mig works on even more effective film with a covering in the form of the phased lattice antenna. Plan to cover with this film all plane in the future. By "Cunning" it is possible to do even old planes...

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